Education

The Big Think Interview

Big Think is the leading source of expert-driven, actionable, educational content — with thousands of videos helping you get smarter, faster. Get actionable lessons from the world’s greatest thinkers & doers. Our experts are either disrupting or leading their respective fields. We aim to help you explore the big ideas and core skills that define knowledge in the 21st century, so you can apply them to the questions and challenges in your own life.

Latest Episodes:

What is trauma? The author of “The Body Keeps the Score” explains | Bessel van der Kolk | Big Think Nov 14, 2024

Show notes

What is trauma? The author of “The Body Keeps the Score” explains, with Bessel van der Kolk.

Contrary to popular belief, trauma is extremely common. We all have jobs, life events, and unpleasant situations causing us daily stress. But when your body continues to re-live that stress for days, weeks, months, or even years, that stress changes your brain, creating trauma inside your mind, and that trauma can eventually manifest in your physical body.

As you can see, trauma isn’t what happens to you, but how you respond to the traumatic situation. Something that is traumatic to one person may be no big deal to the next. Whether something becomes traumatic or not has a great deal to do with who’s around you while you experience this event. Were you alone and scared, were you comforted by friends and family?

The problem with trauma is that it starts when something happens to us, but that’s not where it stops - it changes your brain. Once your brain changes and you’re in constant fight or flight mode, it can be hard to stay focused, feel joy, or experience pleasure until this trauma is healed. Luckily, modern psychological practices are developing innovative ways to heal from trauma that actually work.

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Train for any argument with Harvard’s former debate coach | Bo Seo Nov 14, 2024

Show notes

Train for any argument with Harvard’s former debate coach, Bo Seo.

Bo Seo, an author and two-time world debate champion, believes our public conversations are in crisis. To Seo, our arguing skills have collectively atrophied over recent decades, resulting in bad arguments that have caused many people to lose faith in the idea that productive disagreements are even possible.

That's why Seo suggests a framework called RISA — which stands for "Real, Important, Specific, and Aligned" — to help people pick their fights more wisely and to give conversations the best possible chance of success. RISA helps individuals find a better way to disagree.

Seo believes that by making a contract with the other party and reminding them of the rules, conversations can be productive, and disagreements can lead to progress.

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The “heroic dose” of psychedelics, according to Johns Hopkins | Dr. Matthew Johnson Nov 14, 2024

Show notes

How a ‘heroic dose’ of psychedelics can be therapeutic, explained by a Johns Hopkins professor.

Psychedelic research is enjoying a renaissance. Recent studies have shown that psychedelic drugs like LSD and psilocybin seem to be a safe and effective method for treating conditions like depression, anxiety, and post-traumatic stress disorder.

And unlike common antidepressants, some people report long-lasting improvements in their mental health conditions after taking just one dose of psychedelics.

What makes these substances so unique and powerful? That’s one of the driving questions behind the research of Matthew W. Johnson, who has conducted numerous studies on the nature of addiction, psychedelics, and other psychoactive substances.

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Male inequality, explained by an expert | Richard Reeves Nov 14, 2024

Show notes

Modern males are struggling. Author Richard Reeves outlines the three major issues boys and men face and shares possible solutions.

Boys and men are falling behind. This might seem surprising to some people, and maybe ridiculous to others, considering that discussions on gender disparities tend to focus on the structural challenges faced by girls and women, not boys and men.

But long-term data reveal a clear and alarming trend: In recent decades, American men have been faring increasingly worse in many areas of life, including education, workforce participation, skill acquisition, wages, and fatherhood.

Gender politics is often framed as a zero-sum game: Any effort to help men takes away from women. But in his 2022 book Of Boys and Men, journalist and Brookings Institution scholar Richard V. Reeves argues that the structural problems contributing to male malaise affect everybody, and that shying away from these tough conversations is not a productive path forward.

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Why the world is going crazy—and how to win back our minds | Jamie Wheal | Big Think Nov 14, 2024

Show notes

The speed at which civilization is progressing has become overwhelming for modern humans and has caused what Jamie Wheal (author of Recapture the Rapture, founder of the Flow Genome Project, and host of the Collective Insights Podcast) calls a “collapse of meaning.” For many, Meaning 1.0 (organized religion) and Meaning 2.0 (modern liberalism) no longer provide the structure and guidance that they used to. "It does feel like the handrails, the things we used to look to for stability and security, have evaporated," says Wheal. "If we've experienced a collapse of meaning, how do we go about restoring it?"In order to reach Meaning 3.0—which Wheal says is a blend of traditional religion and modern liberalism without the promise of an escape—we need to focus on mending trauma, reconnecting with inspiration, and connecting better with one another.

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